


Something Hateful

by thepointoftheneedle



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bitey vampire stuff, Blood, F/M, Smut, Vampire AUs are hard to tag, Vampire Sex, bughead are a little dark...it's a vampire AU..., two female characters are drugged so they are easier to bite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:15:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25363726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointoftheneedle/pseuds/thepointoftheneedle
Summary: I wrote a vampire AU. In this story Jug and Betty are horny vampires out for revenge on the man who tried to destroy Betty.The blood oozed into her mouth, soothing, satiating.  “More,” she groaned, grabbing another gory handful.  Soon there was no meat left on the plate, at her feet lay the exsanguinated pale husks.  Where could she get more flesh? Horrifyingly her first thought was “Polly’s room.” She had a brief, ghastly, vertiginous vision of her sleeping niece and nephew, pink, plump and delicious in the bassinets beside their mother’s bed.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 31
Kudos: 80
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	Something Hateful

**Author's Note:**

> "Which Mountain Goats song inspired this?" I hear you ask. Well it's Alpha Rats' Nest. Here are some of the lyrics:
> 
> Oh sing, sing, sing  
> For the dying of the day  
> Sing for the flames that will rip through here  
> And the smoke that will carry us away  
> Yeah sing for the damage we've done  
> And the worse things that we'll do  
> Open your mouth up and sing for me now  
> And I will sing for you

Betty knew there was something very wrong when she awoke from a troubled slumber to find herself in front of the refrigerator. The clue was that she was in the act of shoving raw steak into her mouth like Jughead eating burgers at a free cookout. She was repulsed and, at the same time, desperate for more. The chewing was too slow to satisfy her but the trickle of blood down her throat was doing something to assuage the yawning, screaming hunger. She picked up another piece of meat and, throwing her head back, squeezed it above her lips. The blood oozed into her mouth, soothing, satiating. “More,” she groaned, grabbing another gory handful. Soon there was no meat left on the plate, at her feet lay the exsanguinated pale husks. Where could she get more flesh?

Horrifyingly her first thought was “Polly’s room.” She had a brief, ghastly, vertiginous vision of her sleeping niece and nephew, pink, plump and delicious in the bassinets beside their mother’s bed. Surely she had not just imagined eating Woody and June? She realised that she had not wanted that but, even more terrifying, she had wanted to bite into their tender, soft, yielding flesh and suck, suck until they were drained like the remains at her feet. She had to get more meat, more blood, and she had to get away from the people that she loved before she hurt them. She dared only return to her room to grab boots and a thick coat and then ran down the stairs, swiping her father’s car keys, only preventing herself from doing something unspeakable to Caramel by a tremendous exercise of will.

She had no clear idea of where she was going and when she glanced into the rear view mirror she was appalled by what she saw. There was blood drying around her lips and on her chin. Her eyes were sunken into hollow sockets, circles around them that were almost black. Her skin was translucent in its pallor. She was a creature from a dark fantasy, macabre, grotesque. Against the ashen colour of her complexion her hair looked brash, too yellow, loathsome. She looked like a broken doll, abandoned on a trash heap, inhuman. That thought gave her pause. The bloodlust, the pale skin, the murderous impulses formed a picture but that picture was straight from a nightmare. She curled up her lip. There, sharp, gleaming and lethal, was a fang. She could assemble the puzzle pieces without difficulty but her mind rebelled against the obvious conclusion. How could something like that have happened to her?

She found herself outside the hospital. She could smell blood and, neither intending nor willing it, her foot slammed against the brake. She abandoned the car and was drawn, as if by irresistible magnets, through the doors. She wandered the empty halls for a few minutes. Three a.m. and all was well, until a monster arrived, until Betty Cooper arrived. There was the paediatric ward. With a great internal struggle she walked past. The geriatric ward was on the right. That was morally slightly less repellent but strangely much less appetising. “Dry,” she thought, feeling disgusted by herself. 

As she moved through the hospital, “hunting,” she thought before shoving the word out of her mind, she tried to understand how this could be her reality. She had felt off colour all day, laying down on her bed when she got home from class that afternoon and falling asleep almost instantly. There had been dreams, dark unsettled fantasies that she struggled to recall. Hiram Lodge had been in some of them, laughing, offering her a glass filled with something sticky and red. 

Suddenly the air was filled with the cloying, sweet, irresistible scent of blood. It had a strange chemical edge which tainted it a little but it was blood and it was close and there was a lot. She was outside the pathology department. She eased open the door, barely stopping herself from running, helter skelter, in the direction of her goal. The room was dark but she could make out a sign reading Human Blood Only on a large stainless steel refrigerator. To her relief there were no white coated employees, not that they could have stopped her. She felt powerful, strong, invincible. If they stood between her and the blood now she would snap them in half and drink them.

She sighed in rapture as she opened the refrigerator and reached for a cool bag of the red nectar, biting the corner open with teeth that felt like the keenest of blades. The blood began to flow into her throat and she almost wept with the pleasure of it. The disgust seemed to have passed away and now there was simply lusty enjoyment. She had drunk three bags and her stomach was full before she realised that she was still not replete. Would she have to suffer this feeling of longing, of desire, for the rest of her life? If she was right about what she thought she was, that would be a long and painful existence.

“Ahem,” the sound of a polite person, attracting her attention by clearing his throat. Who the hell, coming upon a feasting vampire, cleared their throat as if they were about to ask someone to pass the scones at a tea party? She wheeled around, some of the last bag spilling across her chest, to find Jughead Jones, leaning nonchalantly against the door behind her. Her friend Jughead and yet, not quite Jughead. She’d always liked him, often in spite of herself. He was moody and brooding, pretentious, pompous and often socially inept. He was also fiercely intelligent, self deprecating in his wit, authentically himself in every situation and, although she had always felt shallow to care about it, he was ridiculously attractive to look at. He was tall and slender and dark, like a shadow cast at twilight, long and lean and impossible to pin down. At this moment she wasn’t sure if she wanted to make love to him or eat him or both. He seemed even taller, even more beguiling.

“You need to run Jug. I’m not myself. I’m dangerous.” she warned him in a low voice.

“Oh Coop, you aren’t dangerous to me. You couldn’t hurt me with a sack of garlic and an aspen stake. Not that you could touch either of those things in your current…predicament. Have you drunk enough yet?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I can drink more but I still want…something. I can’t seem to drink enough. Why are you here? What the hell is going on?”

“I think that Hiram turned you the night before last. Have you been having dreams?”

“Yes, do you mean that Hiram Lodge made me a vampire? Why would he do that? How can he do that?”

“Well, shall we table those important but non urgent subjects for a moment while we prevent you from dying?”

“I’m dying? I thought…”

“Yes, everyone thinks that. Becoming a vampire is a little more complicated than people understand. It’s not enough to be bitten, you also have to consume the blood of a vampire. I think that Hiram bit you but it looks like he didn’t give you any blood. You won’t be able to take sustenance from the blood you drink. You’ll drink and drink but you’ll waste away and die. Probably by sundown tomorrow...today actually... unless you drink the blood of a vamp.”

“Jughead, can you just tell me why you’re here and how you know all this? I’m so confused, and hungry, and full.” Tears sprang up in her eyes and Jug stepped forward and pulled her into his arms, stroking her hair. She couldn’t remember him ever touching her before, not in real life anyway, but this felt familiar, like climbing into her own bed after a trip, like sweatpants after a long day in a prim dress.

“You’re a smart girl Cooper. I’ve made a vow that prevents me from telling you something but I know you can work it out. Take a moment and think.”

“Jug, are you a vampire?” She pushed back from him in alarm, staring at him, at his beautiful skin, at his glossy, soft hair, at those timeless, fathomless blue eyes, feeling his irresistible sex appeal. He grinned and his teeth glinted. “Fuck. That’s why you’re so hot.”

“Well, thank you kind lady. I’d like to think that’s just my natural allure but being a supernatural being might play some small part in it I guess. Now, would you like a drink?” He held up a thin wrist and waggled his long fingers enticingly. Betty was beginning to struggle to assimilate this new reality where the kid she had sat next to in middle school, who’d pulled her braids and stole her erasers, was telling her he was of the undead and asking her to sample his particular vintage, B negative she’d guess, knowing Jughead as she did.

“You want me to suck you?”

“All in good time Cooper. Do you want some blood first?” Again with that grin. She found that she could feel the proximity of his blood, practically smell its unique flavour. She very much wanted to drink Jughead Jones’ blood. She nodded, ashamed of her desire but he put a finger under her chin and lifted her downcast eyes to his. “I want to give this to you Betty. You aren’t doing anything to be ashamed of. We’re two consenting vampires engaging in, for us, perfectly normal activities. Got it?” She nodded and he maintained eye contact as he brought his wrist to his mouth and bit down firmly, not flinching at the pain that he must have felt. He brought the wound to her lips and she fell upon it eagerly, too desperate for his life force to be embarrassed any longer. She suckled and swallowed and moaned, low in her throat, moving closer to him to press her body against him as she drank. He moved around her so that her back was pressed to his chest, his arm embracing her and her lips against his wrist. She pressed back and he groaned a little. She looked back at him in alarm. 

“Am I taking too much? Am I hurting you?”

“No Cooper. Shit, it’s just pretty erotic and you’re making those noises and you’re kind of up in my junk here. I’m sorry, I’ll try to stop getting off on it.” His pale cheeks actually flushed a little pink.

“No, don’t worry. I’m getting pretty excited about it too. And you’re so delicious. So rich. May I?” He nodded and his eyes half closed as her lips returned to his arm. She couldn’t resist running her tongue over his wrist before she began to suck again and he thrust against her just once so that she could feel that he was, genuinely, enjoying himself. His blood was warm, maybe not as warm as a living human, but he wasn’t cold like a frog. It was thick, the smooth texture of delicious cocoa made with whole milk and real melted chocolate. She worked her lips against his skin, pulling his flesh deep into her mouth, massaging it with her tongue. He tasted full bodied like a robust sauce on meat or a heavy red wine. There was depth and complexity to the flavour, nuances of tobacco, black cherry, leather and pepper. She began to feel drunk on it and knew that she must stop now or she would never be able to. She dropped his wrist and turned around to press against him more intimately, lifting up her head to press kisses on his lips. “Thank you Jug,” she whispered. “You taste so good.”

“Feeling better?” he whispered into her hair, kissing her forehead. 

“Mmm, much better. I’m so sleepy though.” 

“Sleep then. I’ve got you.” He picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all and she rested her heavy head against his chest as he carried her out of the hospital. Then there was darkness.

When she woke it was to soft, worn sheets in an unfamiliar room. It was certainly his room, she could smell him everywhere. Her senses were much more acute and they were all consumed with him. She looked down to find she was wearing a T shirt that wasn’t hers. It had a large grey letter S on it and she ran her fingers across its serpentine curve. Checking down the neck she saw that she was still wearing her bra. A gentleman vampire then. She was glad, she wanted to watch him when he looked at her. She hoped that it would be soon. A frail glimmer of sunshine slunk into the room around the edge of thick blinds but she couldn’t tell if it was morning or late afternoon. She tentatively put her feet on the floor and stood unsteadily on swaying floorboards in what she realised was the Jones family trailer. The world seemed to rush back at her in a maelstrom of anxieties. Her parents would be frantic. She was also hungry. What would she eat? Who would she eat?

Jughead was stretched out on the couch, his long legs hanging over the end onto the floor. He was holding up a book in one hand, squinting slightly against the low beams of light slanting through the windows. Her breath caught in her throat. The line from his foot to his raised arm, to his striking profile was heartbreakingly beautiful, a perfect subject for a romantic painting. The light fell across him in a soft caress. She wondered that he could so transfigure this down at heel room. She tried to focus, recover her analytical intelligence. It was definitely afternoon. “We don’t burn up then, in the sun?” she observed. 

He put the book down and, smiling, reached out his long arm towards her. She stepped forward and took his hand like that was the most natural thing in the world. She felt a connection to him thrumming through her veins. So this was a thing now. “Nah, it’s not comfortable and we get sunburned more easily but grab the factor 50 and you’re good to go. Your days at the beach are probably in the past though.”

He scooted up on the couch to make space for her and she pulled his legs back onto her lap without thinking about it until they lay, heavy and relaxed across her lap. The contact felt good, grounding somehow. “OK Jug. Start at the beginning and explain how my life has suddenly become an episode of Buffy. Ideally without the musical numbers.”

“Well I assume you’ve already worked out that the Serpents are a vampire coven.”

“What? No. I absolutely haven’t worked that out. What the hell!” He looked a little disappointed in her.

“Come on Coop. Get with the programme. How many hints do you need? Most legendary vamp?”

“Well Dracula obviously. And Jughead Jones.” And now, apparently, she was flirting with him. He turned his lopsided grin on her and a cloud of butterflies took flight in her belly.

“No, not sexiest. Famous. Dracula, meaning son of Dracul yeah? And Dracul means…”

“Dragon, son of the dragon. Oh but dragon and snake are the same word aren’t they? Son of the snake. Oh my god, the tattoo!” She’d seen and been simultaneously concerned about and turned on by the tattoo on his bicep when she and Jug and Archie went to the swimming hole for their annual labor day picnic, this year with Veronica for the first time. Jug had pulled off his t shirt to reveal its snaky glory, a fanged cobra wearing a crown, the serpent prince. No-one mentioned it, unsure what to say, aware their lives seemed to be taking them in radically different directions. Well her course had certainly corrected to match his now. She wondered if she would have her own tattoo soon. What would Alice Cooper have to say about that?

Jughead was still reproaching her with her failure to put two and two together. “One of the guys is called Fangs, Betty. We aren’t exactly being subtle.” She supposed she would have to accept the undeniable truth of this information but she didn’t understand what it meant for her. 

“So you kill people? Drain their blood. Violate virgins. Eat babies. That’s your shtick.” Jug knitted his brows.

“Hey Betts. I’m still Jughead. Do I strike you as the baby eating type? We have progressed a little beyond the middle ages you know. But…if you have a virgin looking to be violated then I’m sure I could oblige. Will violate to order, provided full consent has been established.” She smiled as he reciprocated the flirting. She hadn’t realised he could do that, that he had any sexual feelings at all. He really was an enigma. “No, we mostly live on take out. There’s infrastructure now, blood in bags. We’re domesticated really.”

“But you eat ordinary food… all the time.” She was remembering the constant grazing, chips and burgers, fries and onion rings, more food than anyone she knew.

“Yeah, well when I was first changed it was tough being around you guys. I ate as a distraction, hard to sink into La Cooper’s luscious jugular when my mouth was crammed with cheeseburger. It doesn’t nourish us. We do it for show, to look normal.”

She tried to consolidate her data, always the good student. “OK, serpents are vampires. No-one has to get killed. Got it. Carry on. Why am I involved in this?” She was pretty sure that at some point she wouldn’t be able to assimilate any more new information. Her brain would rebel and she’d start running around singing and reciting poetry like Ophelia, except she wouldn’t even be able to drown herself.

“So a year ago Hiram Lodge shows up in town. We had no idea why, that it had anything to do with us but then he approached my dad and asked to be turned. I mean that’s weird for a number of reasons. We don’t advertise what we are and if someone learns about us they don’t generally want anything to do with it. And also turning someone is pretty intimate…well you know.” He turned his penetrating blue gaze on her and she suddenly understood the phrase bedroom eyes. She gasped and licked her lips, remembering the taste of him on her tongue, the slide of his blood in her throat. She trembled a little and that made him shiver too and look away to continue with his story. “Anyway my dad is the most unimaginatively heterosexual of men and Hiram’s pretty straight too, notwithstanding all that steam room business, so… weirdsville. My dad says, effectively, that Hiram should get his rocks off some other way and Lodge takes offence. Hell hath no fury like a mobster scorned I guess. He started trying to destroy us, buying up the Southside, closing down businesses, all that. Then he builds the prison but there’s more to it than that. It has to be a front of some sort. Well you know, you’ve been investigating for “The Blue and Gold” right? Eventually he finds a guy he can persuade to do the deed, a low life called Tallboy, and from the off he vamps it right up, no blood bags for him, fresh meat all the way. When we caught Tallboy and… had a word with him about it, he said there was something weird about Lodge’s blood. He thought he was sick. I guess that’s why he wanted to be changed, to escape whatever was wrong with him. Now he’s started to turn other people, making his own coven. The two creepy twins Leon and Nico, they were the first, we think. He’s their sire, they give him their loyalty, do his will. He’s building a vampire crime family, fangsters not gangsters.” He grinned at his own joke, he’d clearly been saving that one.

“Oh, that’s terrible Jug. Never make puns. You suck at it.” She giggled and he groaned and put his head in his hands. Suddenly she put it together, “Oh my God, so when I started to investigate what his prison was really for he probably got worried that I’d out him as a vampire. He murdered me. That’s what he did right?”

“Yeah, but how did he manage it?” 

Betty had already thought the same thing but she remembered enough of her last human night to have worked it out. The thought of it made bile rise in her throat but she held his hand to strengthen her resolve and explained. “I had a sleepover at V’s. Mr Lodge gave us hot milk with rum at bedtime. I was happy, it made me feel like a grown up. I felt a little woozy afterwards but I’m not used to booze so I just thought I was tipsy. He totally roofied me. I guess he bit me in the night. I haven’t noticed a bite though.”

“No, I had a look last night when I put you to bed.” She looked at him accusingly. “Not like that. I was respectful, I’m not that kind of predator. You should take a shower and check properly. I can’t see how he could do it and leave you unmarked.”

“OK, but Jug, I’m hungry.”

He patted her head patronisingly but for some reason she found it cute not annoying. “You’re insatiable is what you are, you vampire. Get cleaned up and I’ll warm up some of the red stuff for you. I’ve got some O Neg in, easier to digest.”

In the shower her blood chilled despite the hot water when she found the bite mark just beside her left breast, where the band of her bra would normally cover it. Next to it there was another puncture mark, a small, painful greying bruise around it. She didn’t know what that meant. She would have to show it to Jug and get his opinion, maybe not just about the wound. As she rinsed her hair she heard the trailer door open and the rumble of Jug’s low voice. She couldn’t make out his words over the sound of the water. He was probably explaining the blonde in the shower to his dad she thought, wondering how much he’d tell.

In the bedroom she spent a long minute looking at the clothes that he’d put out for her. A clean S t-shirt, sweatpants, a pair of often washed plaid boxers. It was the boxers that were presenting the problem. It would be impossible to put them on without thinking very dirty things. The surprise was how much she wanted to think those things. That soft fabric, close to her skin, touching her there, when it had been close to his skin before, touching him. It was a line of thinking that she anticipated would lead in a straight line back to her imminently taking them off again. She jumped when she heard Jug’s dad start yelling. It was a small trailer and the walls were as thin as paper so she could hear every word now the shower was off. Jug seemed to have told his dad a lot. He was saying something about breaking a blood oath. “The Serpents will come for you, boy. They’ll tear you to pieces. I can hold ‘em off but you’ll have to give her up if they’re going to let you stay in town. What the hell possessed you? I kept telling you to stay away from her. Once those women get their claws in it’s hell to get away. And I should know.” Betty was confused. Was she one of 'those women?’ She had no idea that FP even knew she existed, he’d never been involved in the parental taxi service like her mom or Archie’s dad. He’d never chaperoned the school dances. And how had Jug put his life in danger for her? He’d treated it like letting her drink from him was just something that needed to happen not like he was breaking a rule. She was beginning to realise that helping her had not been a simple act of compassion, he’d risked everything to be there for her, his family, his home, his life itself.

Jug was yelling now too, frustrated and furious. “I didn’t want to turn her. It was the last thing I wanted for her. Christ, haven’t I stayed away, watching her from the shadows when all I wanted was to touch her? Will you fucking listen for once in your life? I had no choice. She was dying.”

“Well Jug, folks die. It’s a shame but that’s how it is. We lose people. That’s a hard lesson that you need to learn. But no, you were thinking with your dick, kid. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“But I didn’t bite her. Just let her drink, I couldn’t have let her die. You couldn’t either.” 

“Don’t fucking lie Jug. You wanted her so you turned her. Now you’re going to bring the Northside down on us all. You’ll get us all cremated and scattered.” She thought that since she was the cause of the argument she should get involved. She didn’t know how to make this right but she had to try. She pulled on the clothes, with only a brief flutter of arousal over the underwear, and stepped into the other room.

She stood as straight as she could, debate team Betty going into action. “Mr Jones, I’m so sorry to be the cause of trouble. Hiram Lodge drugged me and bit me and let me go home to die. Jug saved my life. Would it help I took off? I could leave town. I have a little money saved, my college fund.” She gave a short, desperate laugh as she realised that all of those dreams, that future, had been stolen from her by Hiram fucking Lodge. She was getting good and mad about that.

FP stared at her alarmed. He seemed to study her closely and then his eyes softened. “Well Miss Cooper, aren’t you the spit of your momma? Does she know about this?”

“No, she’d never believe it. I’ve no idea what to do.”

“Oh she’ll believe it alright. And it’ll be my fault, no doubt. Everything always has been. No girl, I guess I won’t put a newly turned vampire out into the world alone. If my boy sired you then you’re his responsibility. Are you sure it was Lodge?”

She explained about the circumstances of the ill fated sleepover and Jug asked if she had found the bite. She nodded and looked down, ashamed. “It looks weird though,” she said. Jug looked at her and saw her anxiety.

“Do you want me to look?” She nodded and reached for the hem of the t shirt but glanced up at FP, mortified that she would be flashing this man who was the same age as her dad. “Hold on a minute then. Dad, can you talk to them? Explain it? Please?” 

“I’ll try. You still broke the rule Jug. We vowed never to add to the coven except by legacy. This girl was always out of bounds. The oath meant that we shouldn’t have gotten involved. I’m sorry Elizabeth, even to save your life.” Betty nodded to show she understood but Jug wasn’t accepting that.

“Well dad, times have changed. This is a new era, maybe we need a new oath,” Jug looked at his father defiantly. He was prepared to fight for her and that made her afraid but also terribly proud. She could also tell that despite the anger on both sides that they loved each other. If Jug was with her then so was the Serpent King. He seemed a pretty powerful ally.

“Well, I wish you luck explaining it to her mother. If you’re smart you’ll be a hell of a lot more scared about Ali than about the serpents. And she will find out. She always finds out.” With that he was thudding down the trailer steps and roaring away on his bike. Betty wondered at the way FP had referred to her mother. No-one called her Ali. She turned her attention back to Jughead who was still waiting to see the wound.

“OK, show me,” he said and she lifted the t shirt, trying to maintain her modesty as much as possible. “Fucking pervert,” he said when her realised where she was trying to show him, “I’ll fucking kill him. Oh my God,” he breathed, reaching out to run his long fingers over the bruised puncture wound alongside the bite sending an electrical pulse through her flesh.

“What is it? What does it mean?” She was almost in tears at his shocked and livid expression.

“Betts, I’m sorry, I have to ask you this. Are you a virgin?” She stared at him, shocked. Why would he ask her such a thing at this moment? “Look, there are vampires, twisted ones, rich ones, who will pay a lot of money for the blood of a virgin. I’m thinking that Hiram sold your blood. He couldn’t resist a taste from the source for himself. He bit you, drained some of your blood with a syringe and then threw you away. If he’s done it to you he might well do it to other girls. A lucrative sideline to all his other business ventures.” 

She began to sob. He’d sold her future, her dreams, her humanity, for cash and a moment of pleasure. She’d been polite to him, tried to make a good impression, minded her manners. “Why did he do this to me Jug? What did I do to deserve this? What’ll happen to me now?”

He slipped off the couch where he’d been holding her hand to kneel at her feet, staring into her eyes, holding her gaze. “Betty, you did nothing to deserve it. He’s a fucking monster but you aren’t. You’re still you, just like I’m still me. But I will, I promise you, make him pay. I’ll tear him into pieces and throw him to the four winds so he’ll never be able to put himself back together.”

She could see in his eyes that he meant every word. He’d cast himself as the knight errant, sacrificing everything for his maiden, throwing himself into that role and it moved her at the same time as she rejected it. “Jug, if anyone is going to make him pay then it’s going to be me. You can help if you want.” He grinned and reached forward to wrap her in his arms, kissing her hair and telling her that he did, very much, want to help.

They held each other for some time until his closeness made the thought of his underwear next to her skin reemerge at the front of her mind. She had never been so conscious of an item of clothing in her life. Eventually she couldn’t contain the thought a moment longer and she moved her head from its place, cradled against his chest. “I’m wearing your underpants,” she whispered, like she was sharing a state secret.

“I know. I thought you’d rather have clean stuff to put on when you had your shower.” He looked a little confused as to why she was mentioning this tiny practical detail.

“Against me. I can feel the fabric against me. Touching me. Oh come on Jug, keep up. It’s exciting.” He gasped and then let out a chuckle. 

“Well now it’s making me excited too.” He leaned down and kissed her, his mouth soft on hers, making her blood pound in her ears. She leaned into him, forcing his mouth against hers with greater and greater pressure until she nipped at his bottom lip with her teeth, gently but forgetting how sharp they were now. A drop of his blood oozed onto her tongue and she drew back, horrified that she had hurt him while his taste overwhelmined her senses. 

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

His voice was much lower when her replied and his eyes were fixed on her mouth. “Hey it’s ok, only a tiny scratch. It was nice. I liked it. Can I do it to you?” Which was how, a few minutes later they were entwined in each other, kissing and whimpering in their passion, his blood on her tongue, hers on his. 

She murmured “Tennessee whisky, my dad gave me some at Christmas. You taste like Tennessee whisky.”

He whispered back, “Pineapple, fresh pineapple, sweet and tart at the same time. Kind of exotic. Mouthwatering. Oh and something spicy too, ginger, that’s it.” 

They were so intent on exploring this new sensation that they didn’t hear the car pull up outside, were unprepared for the thundering on the insubstantial door, for the banshee wailing that accompanied it. “Elizabeth? Elizabeth Cooper? Are you in there? Come out this instant or I’ll set fire to this trash can with you in it. This second, young lady!” 

Jug reeled back from her, reaching for the shirt that she had pulled off him a few moments before and looking genuinely alarmed. “Is that your mom?”

“Who else would it be?” she replied, resigned to another parental confrontation. There was a part of her that, in this strange new world, longed for her mother. She would like to be held and told that everything would be alright, that momma still loved her, that there were no monsters in the closet. Unfortunately she knew only too well that Alice Cooper would never be that kind of mother. Her love was always conditional. Be what she wanted and she’d love you, cross her and you’d be dead to her. Betty smiled. Undead to her. She threw open the door. “Hello Momma. Won’t you come in and stop causing such a scene?”

Alice thrust herself inside, raising a hand to Jughead who braced for the hit but kept his hands by his sides, refusing the decisive retaliation that was well within his power. “You monster! Have you turned my baby? Am I too late? I’ll kill you. I’ll put your head on a spike outside this rats’ nest. You’re just like your evil father.” Despite what FP had said, Betty had been expecting to have to break the news to her mother that vampires were not a fantasy but rather flesh and blood people, living in the Sunnyside Trailer Park and the Pembroke, right in the heart of Riverdale, but it seemed her mother was better informed than she had realised. She stepped between her mother and Jughead, forestalling the blow.

“I’m a vampire Momma, but it wasn’t Jug that did it. He saved me. I was dying. I almost drank the twins. Jug found me, starving, and let me drink from him. You’re too late to prevent it even if you’d rather that I died. Now why don’t you go home? I don’t suppose you’ll want anything to do with me now.” Alice stared at Betty in horror. She seemed lost for words for once in her life. Jug stepped in.

“Mrs Cooper, I’m sorry this happened. I would never have turned her unless I had no choice but you wanted to be turned once. You know it’s not the end of Betty’s life. I’m here for her, I’ll take care of her. I’d do anything for her.” Betty was losing her capacity to be surprised now. Her mother had wanted this for herself? 

“Well if you didn’t do it who did? Was it your reprobate father?” She took a step towards Jughead as she yelled but he stood his ground. 

Betty answered for him. “Eww, momma. As if Jug’s dad would do that. It was Mr Lodge. When I stayed over at The Pembroke.” 

She could see her mother was disgusted by her. “You and Hiram Lodge were intimate? Betty! My god. Is there anyone in town you aren’t having sex with?”

Now Betty was furious. That her mother would unquestioningly blame her for this without attempting to learn the truth made her lose any self control. “He drugged me momma.” she hissed, menacingly. “He did it without me even knowing. And you never warned me, never told me how to protect myself, sent me out into a world that I was completely unprepared for. And, since you’re so concerned about my sex life, I’m only having sex with Jughead. And it’s great, he’s great. Let me tell you all about it, what he does to me, how he makes me scream…” Alice was backing away from her daughter, her eyes wide and terrified by this fierce girl, fighting back at her for the first time. Betty curled her lip to show just a glimpse of fang and Alice turned and fled, the car peeling away from the curb in a squeal of rubber. 

Jug was on the couch, laughing so hard that he was almost crying. “Cooper, you are magnificent. She’s scary but you’re Joan of Arc, Boudicca, Lozen. Oh and thanks for the compliment about my completely untested virility. I think the whole trailer park heard that. I’m going to be such a legend.”

She straightened her shoulders and tried to calm her heartbeat. “Well you’re welcome. I hope to get you to live up to it but first I think I’m missing some pretty major parts of this story. My mother knows about vampires… knows about you?”

Jug patted the couch and she sat down next to him as he told her the story in his own inimitable style. “Ok, once upon a time in a dumpster fire of a town, two crazy kids fell in love. My dad, FP, big man on campus, dreams of college, of getting free from poverty and the hardscrabble life he’d been used to, and your mother, Ali Smith. They came from the wrong side of the tracks but they were young and in love so they thought they could shake off Riverdale. But then it turned out that his father’s gang wasn’t just a gang, his dad expected him to join, to be turned, to uphold the legacy. He resisted but his dad was a bad man, a drunk and a bully who’d do whatever it took to get what he wanted. He threatened Ali, promised he’d turn her if FP didn’t step up, do his duty by the Serpents. So he did. He became a vampire, became the Serpent King in his turn. Ali found out what had happened, always had that journalistic nose for a story, and she begged him to turn her so they could be together forever. He refused, he wouldn’t drag her into it with him, wouldn’t hear of it. He cut her loose but it didn’t take, she kept coming round, pleading with him, begging him to change her, forcing him to reject her over and over again, tearing him apart. To end it once and for all he took up with another girl, one he didn’t care about. He was so keen to protect your mom that he knocked this girl up.” He pointed at his chest. “I exist only because FP Jones loved Ali Smith so much that he’d make me to keep her away from his rotten fucking life. So thanks to your mom, I guess, for my, until last night, pretty shitty existence. Ironically the worst night of your life was the best night of mine. You lost a future and I got one.” Betty’s heart hurt. It seemed to her that all of these struggles, these moments of misery and agony were like rocks in the riverbed over which her life was flowing, being directed this way and that by Ali Smith begging outside this very trailer, by Gladys Jones giving birth to a baby that no-one wanted just for himself, by FP doing whatever it took to keep her mother safe. Now her mom had to see her daughter get what she had wanted so badly that she would have given up everything for it. FP had to watch his son turn a girl when he had ruined his life, maybe lots of lives to make a different choice.

“But Jug, what about you? Why did you choose this? Did FP force you?”

“No, he never wanted this for me. He was always honest with me about what he was, at least once my mom had left. He told me that he wanted a different future for me, a better future, college, my writing, all of it. But then he got arrested and sent to jail. I was the Serpent King’s son, out here, unprotected. Other gangs want to take our turf, take over Riverdale. The Ghoulies are the worst of them. They aren’t nearly as scrupulous as we are about forbidding live kills, they like to get kids hooked on drugs and then feed from them, farm them for their fixes until they’re bled dry. And I had no protection against them. So the Serpents offered me a deal. I turned it down, for a long time, but then the ghoulies beat me up to send a message to my dad. He had to turn over the Southside to them or I’d be killed. So, finally, I took the deal so they couldn’t use me as a bargaining chip. I was turned. My dad still hasn’t really forgiven me.”

“Who did it? It’s intimate you said.” Betty knew that she sounded like a jealous idiot but she needed to know if she had a rival.

He smiled at her. He knew why she had asked. “Toni did. She did it as a kindness. If she hadn’t, Sweetpea was going to do it so she saved me an uncomfortable night. A new vampire gets imprinted a little on their sire and it can be confusing. I kind of fell in love with her for twenty four hours but she was kind and didn’t let it go too far. She likes girls, you knew that right? Anyway, we’re just pals now. You don’t have any competition.” That made sense. Betty had seen Toni watching her cousin Cheryl when they were at Vixens practice in a way that was less about learning a routine and more about imprinting the team captain on her soul. She reached up and combed her fingers through his soft dark hair and he half closed his eyes at the sensation. She kept stroking his hair while she ran soft kisses along his jaw, wanting him to feel the depth of her affection, as well as how much she wanted him.

“But why were you there, last night, at the hospital?” she murmured.

He whispered, his voice so low that she had to get even closer to hear him. “You must know that I like you Betty, I always have. I mean, liked you in a more than friends way.” Betty hadn’t known that. Apparently she was completely oblivious to everything that went on around her. Twenty four hours ago she would have said that Jughead Jones was an open book to her. Her gawky, misanthropic, aromantic, witty, sarcastic friend. She hadn’t known he was a creature of darkness who pined for her, and not just to drink her. But then she had been keeping a a guilty secret too. When she woke, tangled in her sheets, damp with sweat, an ache between her legs, a shameful yearning dragging her hand into her pyjamas, it was always him she was picturing, his dark hair brushing against her belly as he kissed her, his long fingers unhooking her bra and brushing over her breasts, his low voice whispering how he was going to take her, make her come. She’d tried to dismiss it, but she’d never been able to overcome it. She’d wanted him since before she had any idea why she had that strange pulling, twisting feeling in her belly.

“I had no idea Jug. We all just thought you weren’t interested in girls. Veronica wondered if you were gay, had an unrequited thing for Archie,” he snorted at that idea, “but Kev said that his gaydar never pinged in proximity to you. I had no idea that you...”

“I guess if things had been different I’d have asked you out, taken you to prom if you’d let me, all that teen crap. But then, before I’d worked up the nerve to say anything, I was turned. My dad knew that I liked you, he warned me that I had to stay away, mustn’t drag you down too, had to protect you like he’d protected your mom. That’s why he told me their story. I just pretended not to be interested in relationships, dating. I mean it’s true...it’s only ever been you and if I couldn’t have you then I didn’t want anyone. But I see you. I can’t help it. So yesterday, at school, I saw. You looked sick and I had a bad feeling about it. Veronica was talking to you about your sleepover and I was worried. So I went by your place, just to check on you. I was outside on the bike when you came running out of the house like a hell hound was after you. I didn’t like the way you looked at the cat so I followed you. I guess you think I’m a stalker creep now, right?” She disabused him of that notion by kissing his neck, sucking a little to see the blush of his blood rising to the surface pink against his perfect olive skin.

“No. I like that you cared enough to worry.” She reached up and kissed him hard. He returned her kiss, sweeping her hair from her neck and moving his lips to kiss her where her blood pulsed under the skin. He moaned and she leaned against him, unable to stay upright with the heady agitation in her blood. He stood and grabbed her under her thighs and pulled her against himself. She wrapped her legs around him, panting with the sensation of his closeness as he walked her back into the bedroom. She wanted him so much, would have let him do anything he wanted with her, wanted to belong to him, to make him hers but she was scared too. She needed to know whether this was ordinary teen lust or some kind of vampire union that she knew nothing about. “Jug, are we about to have sex or are we doing some vampire thing now?”

“Well, I was planning on making out but…,” he must have seen her confusion so her reached out to touch her jaw. “You know I want you, that’s hard to miss. But like I said, being a new vampire is confusing. You might like me now because of all that blood you took on board last night. When that’s out of your system you’ll go back to thinking I’m some lanky weirdo you used to know. I don’t want you to do anything that you can’t roll back from. Maybe if you still feel like you want to in a couple of weeks we could think about…”

When she replied she was shocked by the sound of her own voice. It was low, almost raspy with lust and need. “Fuck that, Jug. I’ve dreamed about you for years, you’ve always been the face I had in my head when I touched myself, biting down on my pillow so I didn’t yell your name. I sat beside you in AP English so that I could look at your hair, imagining being alone with you, running my fingers through it, kissing your neck, taking you in my hand, stroking you until you got hard, kissing you there, licking, sucking, how you’d taste, how it’d feel when you came in my mouth.” She was warming to the theme now, wanting to be dirty for him, to excite him.

His breath was fast and shallow, racing with excitement. “Stop Betty, you’re going to kill me here.” He was pushing her back against the mattress, pressing himself against her, trying to touch her everywhere. “Oh fuck why can’t I get it together? I’m trembling Betts, it’s all too much.” She realised that she may have overdone the dirty talk.

“Jug, stop a second.” He pulled back, so vulnerable, so open to her. He was such a creature of his emotions, she needed to be the planner, the strategist. “There’s no pressure. I plan to have a lot of sex with you if you want to. Let’s treat this like reconnaissance, we’ll survey the territory, make a plan of attack. If it goes wrong we’ll try again. OK? But I think we need to start slow. Veronica says it’s important to go slow even when you really want to go fast.”

Jughead sat back and took a deep breath. “Veronica gives sex tips?”

“Yeah, unsolicited ones. All the time. Take your clothes off. I want to look at you.”

He took another breath before deciding to embrace his fate like a man throwing himself into a cold lake to get the deed done rather than lowering himself in inch by inch. He stood and pulled off his t shirt, throwing it onto the floor. He unbuttoned his jeans and then, looking into her eyes he pushed his jeans and boxers down together. She maintained eye contact before slowly raking her eyes down over his body. She’d seen him shirtless before, broad shoulders, lean, finely muscled chest, the serpent on his arm, slim hips, already hard for her. She hadn’t seen many guys, had been embarrassed by the pornography she had seen when she tried to learn about sex. Those men had seemed strange, untidy creatures, horribly engorged and glistening unwholesomely. He was not untidy, his thighs were lithe and well shaped and she wanted to kiss him there and in the dimples of his hips, she wanted to reach out and touch him everywhere. She realised she was staring and he was embarrassed. “You’re really beautiful Jug. So perfectly beautiful. Can I touch you?”

“Are you going to get undressed?”

“If you want me to. I guess.” He nodded, seemed unable to speak. She stood in front of him and pulled off the t shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra and she had never shown herself like this to a man. She felt his eyes on her breasts as she stood there, brazen in front of him, as he whistled out a breath. He looked up into her eyes and grinned as she hooked her thumbs into her waistband and copied him, sweatpants and boxers down in one movement, ready to be inspected. His fingers reached out for her but he paused and looked into her eyes, waiting for permission. She stepped towards him and he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. 

“You’re a dream. I can’t really believe you’re real. Should we lay down?’ They lay facing each other. He had calmed down a little and seemed to have decided to try following Veronica’s counsel. He touched her face, stroking those long fingers along her jaw and over her neck while she looked at him, watching his expression. He seemed pensive, almost meditative. He drew one finger down the centre of her throat to her collar bones and then looked up at her face. She smiled at him and reached out and copied what he had just done, glancing her fingertips over his skin. Then she gently pushed him onto his back, placing her hands firmly on his chest and then leaning to lick and suck at his nipples. He took careful note of the suggestions and then pushed against her shoulder to take his turn. He picked up on the theme but he improvised pretty expertly around it, adding a gentle pinch and a move where he held her breast while he sucked her flesh into his mouth. It made her cry out softly and that sound made him twitch against her leg so she let herself do it more. He clearly liked that a lot. As he occupied himself with her chest she reached down and put her hand around his length. V had given tips to a few of the Vixens using a banana to the accompaniment of hysterical giggling and hushed interrogations until Archie had joined them with his tray and Cheryl had offered him the banana while Melodie laughed so hard she fell off the bench. Betty remembered, ”Firm, decisive pressure but don’t bruise the banana, you’re not trying to peel it.” She went to work with determination but she had only given him about three strokes when he grabbed her wrist.

“Am I doing it wrong?” she asked, concerned.

“Oh Betts,” he moaned, sounding desperate again, “you’re doing it so right. If you carry on doing it right then we’re about done here. Can I try?”

She lay back and parted her legs a little, feeling like a woman in one of Polly’s dirty novels. She wondered if she ought to be praising his pulsating member or his magnificent manhood or something but simply couldn’t do that and keep a straight face so she kept quiet. Then he touched her and she stopped keeping quiet. She’d touched herself, she thought she knew what to expect, but this was so different. His fingers were magical, mystical. When he stroked her at the top of her thighs she wondered how much more intense it could get. Then he touched her at her very centre and she gasped with the electricity running through her. Then he found the place that made her yell and flinch. “Fuck Betts, did I hurt you?” he looked at her alarmed.

“No, it’s amazing, it’s just… a lot.” He went back to work, avoiding the place that had caused her reaction. He moved above her to look at her there as he worked, a serious student, trying hard to get an A. Soon he was kissing her upper thighs and she was writhing under him, trying to get him back to where he was before. 

“There, now?” he whispered, glancing up at her between her legs, his hair falling into his stormy eyes, his lips so red.

“Yes, yes, now, oh please now.” He put his head down and ran his tongue over the place and she exhaled a long sigh of pleasure and relief. He grinned, she felt him grin. He was getting his A and he knew it. He redoubled his efforts, sucking gently until she thought that she might die from it. Then he used a finger to explore her, gradually moving into her and she began to sob with the sensation. He hesitated, she couldn’t bear it if he stopped now so she began to moan his name, “Yes Jug, please, yes, Jughead." She knew she would make him unbearably smug but there was nothing to be done, he mustn’t stop. She’d made herself come in those lonely nights when she imagined him like this but the orgasm that was building now was different. It hovered like a roiling storm cloud, building and building until the whole sky was heavy with its ominous power and then finally the lightning struck, shocking and sudden and illuminating and frightening in its power to burn. She yelled, he put his hand over her mouth to quiet her, she bit down and sucked the blood that came from him and he moaned in pleasure as she did it. 

“Fuck Betty I need to be inside you. I think my dad has condoms, there was a woman a few months ago.” 

He made to get up and she grabbed his shoulders, “It’s ok Jug, my mom put me on birth control. Protecting me from all the wrong things. Do it now, I need to feel you.”

He sighed as he pushed against her slowly, trying not to hurt her, trying to be gentle. It wasn’t enough for her. She pulled up her knees, driving him deeper, mewling and meeting his thrusts. She was so ready for him, had been ready last night in the pathology lab, thought she might always be ready. Soon he was deep inside her, cursing under his breath, wanting to make her come like this but unsure how to make that happen. She saw his need and reached out to grab his hand and bring it to touch her as he moved inside her. He got the idea at once and pressed against her, circling with his thumb and she was climbing through sensation again, moving incrementally higher with every touch. The thought came into her head “Jughead Jones is fucking me with everything he is,” and she gasped, shocked to have thought it. His hair was damp with sweat, it brushed against her breast when he bent his head to kiss her. She twisted her fingers into it and tugged just a little, his throat was right there and she lifted her head to suck on it, pulling his intoxicating blood to the surface. She could taste him again and she reached the summit and threw herself down, tumbling off the cliff. He felt her orgasm and grinned like a maniac and thrust hard, three times become coming himself in a flurry of swearing and, she was almost sure, a tear or two.

They lay side by side like effigies on a tomb on his thin mattress in the dilapidated trailer, trying to process what had happened. He looked across at her, “Was it Ok?” and she knew he meant “Am I enough?”

She rolled towards him and traced her finger along his top lip, red and sensuous, often curled cynically but so ready with a smile for her. “First, it was amazing. You’re amazing. I didn’t choose what happened to make me a vampire and that makes me so mad but now I know it was the only way for me to have this, us, and I’m so happy about this. I really like having sex with you Jug. Let’s do it a whole lot.”

“Sound like a plan I can get behind, and on top of and underneath and...,” they giggled. “You said something before about wanting to be with me, about liking me. Since when?”

“Since forever but so much more after last summer, that day at the swimming hole, the tattoo made me…” She hesitated, embarrassed to say it but then she remembered what they had just done so she said it anyway, “ It made me get wet.” He gasped, a little shocked and then he grinned like she had given him the best present. “I had to stay in the water so long just to calm down. When Arch and Veronica were making out and thought we didn’t know I was trying to make you kiss me just with the force of my will but you just read your book, I hated that goddamn book.”

“I wasn’t reading. I was lying there on my stomach so you didn’t see…you know. I had to remember to keep turning the pagers but I didn’t read a word all afternoon. It was only a couple of weeks after I was turned. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do to you, bite you, screw you, run away with you... but I wanted to do it so badly that I thought I might just catch fire.”

They spent the whole night kissing, touching, laughing. As the first blueish, cold, dawn light reached around the edges of the blinds he asked her what she wanted to do about Hiram Lodge.

“I want to destroy everything he loves in front of him, to burn down his whole life and then I want to make him suffer for as long as it’s possible for him to suffer. Killing him is too much mercy. Can we even be killed? Is all that stuff true about crucifixes and stuff?” She realised there was still so much that she didn’t know.

“Not all of it. We’re hard to kill. If you want to be sure you burn a vamp until there’s just ashes and then spread the ashes as widely as possible, preferably intercontinentally, the stake thing works after a fashion because you can be pinned down long enough to be burned. Decapitation is ok as long as you keep the head where it can’t be reunited with the body or, whoops, vamp’s back. The church has some pretty strong hoodoo. They can consecrate ground or water or objects like crucifixes and we can’t touch it. Doesn’t kill us unless we are trapped by it for ages but it hurts like fuck. It burnses us.”

“Alright Gollum. So God hates me now because some creep assaulted me?” She didn’t want to believe that Hiram had taken her afterlife as well as her life.

“Hey, I didn’t say God. I said the church. I never get that. Isn’t the whole deal with God that he doesn’t hate anyone? Not gay folks or trans people or women at abortion clinics or anyone. The hate is all church baggage, right? Basically they’ve had a couple thousand years of hating us and they’ve worked out some tricks that work against us.”

What we need is an inside man to help bring him down, get us into the belly of the beast where he’s soft and weak.” Betty said, strategising like a woman who has had all of her needs thoroughly met and has spare operating capacity. 

“Veronica?”

“I wouldn’t ask her to betray her dad. There’s a whole Electra Complex waiting to happen there. And she loves him in a weird, twisted way. No we need someone who really hates him.” They looked at each other for a moment before saying, in unison, “Hermione Lodge!”

They strategised for another day before returning to Riverdale High on Friday, unmistakably two young people in love. Walking the corridor hand in hand, they caused a minor scandal amongst their classmates. “I heard she left home to shack up with him!” someone whispered. “Her mom disowned her because she caught them screwing.” “I heard she’s pregnant.” Betty took the gossip in her stride, not even blushing when Reggie asked how she was enjoying the Serpent, in front of everyone in the student lounge. 

“Very much, thank you Reg. I’m very satisfied all round,” she smiled, swinging up her backpack and striding off to Calculus. Veronica was furious that so much seemed to have happened in Betty’s life without either her knowledge or consent but Betty took her aside and explained that she had had a huge fight with her mom and that Jughead had been there to help her. She said that all that drama had led to them admitting their feelings for each other and then she thanked her for the sex tips, raising an eyebrow and smiling. V clasped her hands together, said “Swoon,” and forgot to be mad. 

Later they were sitting at a lunch table, Betty listlessly turning over salad leaves with her fork instead of eating, when Toni approached in tears. “Hey Betty, have you seen Jughead?” she asked with a sob in her voice. 

“I think he’s on his way here. Probably asking for extra slop in his sloppy joe. What’s wrong?” Toni looked uncertainly at Veronica but Betty reassured her. “It’s OK , Veronica’s a good friend, you can tell us.”

Toni swallowed hard. “It’s just things at home are pretty bad. My uncle found out that I like girls and he’s being such a dick, saying I’m a disgrace, that I need to go to one of those camps. I just need to get out but I don’t know where to go.”

Oh Toni that’s awful. If I was living at home you could come stay with me but Jug and I are at his trailer with FP. It’s pretty crowded. I’m so sorry.”

Betty knew she could rely on Veronica’s kind heart. “Well you’re going to stay at the Pembroke with me Toni. I won’t stand by and see you threatened. Not on my watch.” Toni thanked Veronica and dried her tears. It was an Oscar worthy performance. “Hey Betty,” Veronica continued, “you should come over too, slumber party? My Dad’s off at a meeting in Atlantic City til Sunday night. Girl’s weekend?”

“Thanks V but Jug and I have plans.” Veronica rolled her eyes, “No, not that...well not just that. Actually you could help us out while you’re in the mood to do favours.”

Betty excused herself from Biology class claiming a sick headache and went to the Blue and Gold office to make a call to Mrs Lodge. She told her that she needed to speak with her urgently but without Veronica knowing. Hermione barely even seemed curious but she agreed that Betty could call on her on Saturday morning when Veronica had her confirmation preparation class. The plan was in motion, the pieces assembled.

On Saturday at ten thirty sharp Betty and Jug were directed into the Lodge apartment by a uniformed doorman. Hermione sat in a shadowy corner of a richly decorated reception room in which all of the curtains were firmly drawn against the first bright spring morning of the year. She wore black as if she were in deep mourning. Even in the half light she looked sick, her normally glossy, sleek hair was covered with an old fashioned lace mantilla but those strands Betty could see looked brittle and dull. Her skin was too pale, yellowish in the shadows, large circles under her eyes and her mouth drawn down in misery. She didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, if she was, it wasn’t working. Betty took a deep breath and let Hermione see the distress that she had been working hard to hide at school. “Thanks for letting us see you Mrs Lodge. We wanted to ask for your help but I wonder if actually we are here to help you instead. Your husband attacked me, here, when I was staying in your home under your protection. He stole my life.” Hermione recoiled in her chair, horror on her face.

“Did he…what did he…?”

“I think you know.” Betty pulled up her blouse and moved her bra strap aside to show her the bite mark. 

“Oh madre de dios. I’m in hell and my husband is the devil. What have I done?”

“We think he stole my blood because I was a virgin. You can see the needle mark.”

“You were a virgin? Did he…” she couldn’t finish the question.

“No but he meant to kill me.”

“He will kill me. He did it to me too Betty.” She moved the lace aside to show them the bite marks, lots of bite marks, on her neck. 

Betty was horrified. “Why are you still here Mrs Lodge? This must have been going on for weeks.” 

Hermione looked down, humiliated and ashamed. “He gives me…I can’t say it…he gives me something to drink. Not enough, never enough. And I drink even though he must have taken it from someone, perhaps killed them. I don’t drink because I want to live. I would like to die but I’m so afraid of the flames. Things like me don’t go to heaven. I’ll burn forever. He has consigned me to hell. I can’t leave or I’ll starve and then I’ll burn.” She was weeping now, silent, dry tears. 

“You don’t have to stay with him,” Jug said, his face a mask of fury and sympathy. “We’ll feed you. You’ll have to pay for your supply but it’s honestly bought, no-one dies for us to live. But we have to stop him Mrs L. He can’t be allowed to hurt anyone else like he hurt you and Betty.”

“He’s too strong. I can’t do anything. He won’t die.”

“We have a plan but you have to help. Will you free yourself, save other girls like me?” Hermione looked at them with something like hope in her tired, sad eyes and nodded. Betty explained the plan while Jug called Sweetpea to get him to bring Hermione what she needed. She even added some arabesques of her own to the design.

Late on Sunday night Toni slept soundly in the guest room at The Pembroke, her hair on the pillow in loose, alluring spirals, her breath lifting her bosom prettily, the cup that had held her warm milk and rum drained on the nightstand. The door pushed open silently, stealthily and a dark figure slipped into the room, moving as silently as a panther. Betty, hiding in the shadows behind the drapes, felt as if she were witnessing her own violation. She wanted to call out to her old, sleeping, innocent self, warn that girl. She must have been breathing hard because Jug, next to her, squeezed her hand. Hiram bent over his prey, moving the neck of her nightdress aside and baring his fangs as he went in for his feast. Quick as lightning Toni turned, sat up and bared her own lethal incisors, burying them deep into his flesh, ripping at his artery and drinking deep. As Hiram struggled, Betty and Jug ran to help Toni and the door flew open and several figures in black leather surrounded them. “Come on Topaz,” Sweetpea said gruffly, “share and share alike.” He bent over the prey and drank deep from the other side of Hiram’s neck, then Fangs was at his wrist, FP on the other side. Sweetpea looked up from his meal at Toni, “Hey Toni, you were almost convincing as a virgin there.”

Toni snarled, “I am a virgin, by one pretty limited definition. We could have had you do it though Sweets, you’re the real deal.”

That was when Hermione appeared in the doorway. FP held up Hiram’s lolling head so he could look at her. She looked much better than when Betty and Jug had called on her the morning before. She had been drinking deep since then. She wore a red satin dress, slit to her thigh. She was with Leo and Nico, Hiram’s trusted capos. He was writhing feebly, trying to call out to them to save him. But they didn’t save him. “Leo,” Hermione said, “Would you be so kind?” and held out a wine glass. Leo held the glass under Hiram’s wrist and the serpents stood aside while he used his sharp teeth to open the blood vessel wider, letting his employer’s blood flow into the glass. He passed it to Hermione who, before her husband’s disbelieving eyes, kissed his capo passionately in thanks and then turned to his twin and kissed him too before draining the glass. “Goodbye husband. I hope you suffer eternal torment.” Then she turned and was gone.

Hiram tried another source of aid, “Veronica, mija, help me!” he called, hoarsely, hopelessly as his eyes closed and he fell into unconsciousness. 

Toni looked at his limp body, bleeding on the white bedlinen. “She can’t hear you Daddy. I swapped our bedtime drinks."

Some hours later when Hiram began to stir and twist at his bonds Betty moved to stand in front of her attacker. He was still weak but his strength would return. She needed to act quickly. He looked around, trying to ascertain where he was being held. She saw in his eyes that he recognised one of the cells in his, as yet untenanted, prison. “Ironic, isn’t it? That you are both the first and the last prisoner in this facility. Do you smell burning Mr Lodge? We have a few minutes to chat but by the end of the night this place will be an inferno. I’m burning down your life. You should have been careful about making monsters Hiram, sometimes they won’t die.”

Jughead opened the cell door and pushed his way in. “OK?” he asked, kissing Betty in greeting while Hiram watched with hatred burning in his eyes.

“Is it done Jug? Is she dead?” Betty asked. He nodded.

“Do you think Papi would like to see the footage?” he asked with a sinister smile. “He likes to see young girls hurt. It might give him a thrill.” Betty nodded and stood to one side, watching her captive’s face as Jughead pulled a tablet from his messenger bag and held it in front of Hiram’s eyes. She didn’t need to watch the screen, she knew what it showed. Hiram watched his daughter, his beautiful Veronica. She was alone, amongst trees, at twilight. She was radiant in a white dress. Then a figure appeared at the side of the screen, Jughead Jones, every inch the Serpent Prince. He looked at the screen and smiled a cold, mirthless smile. Then without warning he was on Veronica, holding her throat with one strong hand. Hiram watched in agony as the creature sank his fangs into his daughter’s throat, blood running from his mouth as he drank and drank. He wasn’t changing her, he was killing her. After drinking his fill he simply let the dead girl fall to the floor and walked away. Jughead, joining them fresh from the murder, smiled again. “She was delicious Lodge. I almost regret killing her so quickly but Betty wanted me to be merciful.” Hiram’s head lolled and when Betty grabbed a handful of hair to force him to look up his face was wet with tears. 

“Well Mr Lodge, that’ll give you something to think about as you lie in your coffin, waiting. We’re getting you buried in consecrated ground. As the wood rots, the earth will fall in on you and burn you away to nothing at all. That is your future, decay, pain and death. And you leave nothing behind, no legacy, no proof you ever even lived. Because you took my life. But I get to make another life. You don’t. Goodbye Hiram, sleep badly won’t you?” Jughead came to stand behind her, his sharp chin resting on her shoulder as Hiram closed his eyes in defeat. They left the cell hand in hand. 

“Pretty successful plan Betts. What now?” he asked as they walked away from the prison where the fire was now spreading beyond any chance of control.

“Well, for one thing you seemed to really like making the movie, Mr Director. You got a great performance out of Veronica. All she could talk about afterwards was how she thought you might be the new Tarantino. You should apply for film school for real. And the effects were great, those blood capsules looked so authentic. I almost thought you actually bit her.”

“Yeah, it was fun. Can vamps be in the movie business?”

“Oh I think there are much worse monsters than you making movies Jug. As for me. I’m not saying that I’ve got a taste for this but, if we hear of any other monsters, maybe we could get involved?” She turned her head and he kissed her hard.

Betty and Jug left Fangs and Sweetpea the job of drugging Hiram and loading their cargo into the coffin, before delivering him to Hermione’s confessor, Monsignor Murphy, who had agreed to take charge of the secret interment when Hermione had explained what her husband had become and showed him the scars on her flesh. He also agreed to inform Veronica that her father had experienced a spiritual awakening and had entered a contemplative order to seek redemption for his sins in prayer and fasting, which was true in a manner of speaking.

Later that night Jug sat next to a bonfire with Betty cosily nestled between his knees, her back resting against his chest. The younger serpents were all there, chatting and laughing. “So Cooper… you're one of us now. How the mighty Northsider has fallen,” Sweetpea said. Jug looked at her, asking if he should get involved but Betty put her hand on one of his thighs and smiled. 

“I don’t see it like that Sweetpea. When I was in trouble the Southside helped me, fed me, clothed me, sheltered me. Toni risked her life for me and I’m so grateful. I think I’ve got a lot to live up to if I’m going to be one of you.” It was a good answer and Sweetpea grinned at her.

“You might be alright Cooper, for a Northsider,” Sweetpea admitted with a grin.

"And you all might be alright for vampires," she smiled back.


End file.
